So I doubt anyone has been following my story much, but here’s the short version: Since me and my fiance have relocated for his promotion I’ve had the worst luck trying to find a new job. Two months into our new city I accepted a position that paid below what I was hoping to make with no benefits and little promotion opportunity. I was happy with what I did, however, until it became clear that I was working for a failing business and a crazy woman who liked to scream at and belittle her employees. Shortly following a particularly bad incident I decided to start up the job search again.

Thankfully this time it took me a little less than two weeks to find a new position- and man does this blow my old gig out of the water. My salary is doubled, full benefits, and lots of promotion opportunity. I redid our budget and we are on track to finally start reaching some of our financial goals. It feels great, and I can’t help but wonder if our wedding plans could change. Before we got started planning we agreed that, frugal as we are, we would rather look back on our wedding day and wish we had spent less vs. wish we had spent more. We obviously aren’t going to go from our original $10,000 budget up to $25,000 or anything, but perhaps we can compromise/deal hunt/DIY a little less. More than likely we’ll keep most of our plans the same and take the honeymoon of our dreams!

Anyway, I just thought it would be fun to see what other bees would do! With a promotion/job change, would your wedding plans change dramatically or would you keep everything as it is? What would you spend a little more on if you wallet was fuller?

As a disclaimer- Thankfully we have no debt besides student loans and we should have those paid off by the end next year. We are waiting to buy a house until his next promotion, so I personally don’t think flexing our budget a couple grand or so is irresponsible.

chickspartan: I would definitely have spent more money if I had it. I would have bought the dress I wanted instead of a knock off, bought the flowers I really wanted, and rented white chairs. The rest of my wedding was extremely simple and cheap but I don’t think I would have changed it much. I would rather save the bulk of my money for a great honeymoon or house.

The only thing I would do diferently is have a full open bar instead of just beer and wine or drink tickets. We haven’t decided which way we’ll go yet but I’m real disapointed we can’t afford an open bar. Other than that I love what we’ve decided to do and wouldn’t change anything else. I would just be less stressed 🙂

Awesome! Congratulations! They say it’s always easiest to find a job while you have a job. 🙂

Also – I’m sorry that you feel you have to brace yourself for comments from other people about how you choose to spend your own money. Enlarging the budget because you have an unexpected bump up in salary is not the problem starting with something that puts you into serious debt you won’t be able to escape from is!

chickspartan: This actually happened to us and our wedding plans did not change. When we got engaged, we were making about half what we make now. Both of our salaries doubled within the year of our engagement. Our budget remained at $10,000, even though we could have afforded more and we did not tap into our savings (we paid as we went). We did increase our honeymoon budget just a little (by like $1,000), but that’s it.

We are even in the process of building a home and from the time we started building (5 months ago) until it’s finished, we are expecting to increase our net income by about 30%. We had an opportunity to up our total house budget and add a bunch of upgrades, but we opted not to. Our plan is to save the money and continue to live well below our means. We are planning on taking a trip to Europe though and will likely go one year earlier than anticipated because of the salary increases.

God I hope this happens to us! I’m actually up for a raise, in about 2 months and FI just got a promotion about 2 months ago. We were so behind on things though, that we haven’t really started to feel the increase in his income yet. Now we’re catching up, but things should be a lot smoother for us in just a couple weeks. We don’t have a firm budget now (very early in the planning process), but it looks like its going to be about 15,000.00 with my parents paying for about half. If I started making double, I’d probably up the budget at least a good $5000.00. The money would probably go to a little less DIY (I’m making FI handle all of the paper items & I’m doing the florals, and decor myself). I’d also upgrade the wedding related activities (bridesmaids tea might turn into a bridesmaids spa day, welcome happy hour might turn into a welcome dinner, and etc.)

Wouldn’t have changed anything for us. I knew I would be tripling my salary 9 months after we got married but we are both frugal people so the budget was set and we tried to stay as close as possible. Though I’m very cautious with money, I’m a person that is more happy to have money in savings and gets anxious spending it.

There are a few things in my wedding that have been cut due to budgetary constraints. If my income went significantly up to where I could add a couple of those things back in I think I would.

My FI and I have an agreement where “extra” money can be put towards the wedding budget. This would be from bonuses at work and extra overtime from my job. It’s money above and beyond what is already allocated in the monthly budget. Not exactly the same situation, but kind of in the same vein.